


Triptychs for Oxenfree

by DevinTowerwood



Category: Oxenfree
Genre: Angst, Domestic Fluff, Drabbles, F/F, Fluff, Possession, Post-Canon, Trauma, Triptych
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-20 13:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9493082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevinTowerwood/pseuds/DevinTowerwood
Summary: A year following the events of the 'Clarissa Lives' -> Alex never goes to the island Oxenfree ending, Alex and Clarissa recovered their memories of the Sunken. Alex eventually invited Clarissa to come join her where she was going to college, where the two get through their days together after a few lifetimes they would have preferred not to live.My first experiment with Oxenfree, and an examination of mutual healing through my favorite pairing.





	1. Chapter 1

 

  


 

I know Clarissa is awake by her silence. Her breathing shifts from quiet to nothingness. With my fingers on her back I can feel her muscles taut, her heart beating too fast for lying in bed. She doesn’t flinch or soften or seemingly register my touch at all.

When I can find sleep I often awaken with my heart like that, trying to make me sprint, swim, scream, something. Sometimes I find Clarissa on top of me, pinning my hands and legs as I try to obey.  
I kiss the notch on her spine, and hold her wordlessly against me.

 

It’s 6:30 when I make it down to the kitchen. Clarissa sits at the counter, staring into oblivion while she sips her coffee. She has an opening shift at 7:30. I have a 9:00 class. Neither of us can bear to stay in bed past dawn.

The coffee is good for warmth but I can’t taste it.

There’s been things missing ever since we started to remember. I can never tell what time it is without my phone. There are times when she’s can’t hear me, only the roar of things that aren’t happening or never will.

 

“Alex. Oooh Alex.”  
Whatever trance I was in breaks, and I find Clarissa on the other side of the glass. I click my seatbelt and step out of the car; she leans over the door to hit me with a bemused, if adoring look.  
I get like that sometimes, trapped in liminal space. It doesn’t seem to scare her anymore, but whenever I break out I’m afraid.

She closes the door behind me and I lock the car. When our hands link together she lifts them kissing the back of my knuckles.

“Still tired?”

I just squeeze her hand tight.


	2. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another short triptych, this time inspired by me reading too much queer theory.
> 
> Alex and Clarissa wonder what family is to them anymore.

Family.

Once there was a time when family made sense. When I’d come home from school and take off my shoes and I would be in my Home, and the people there were Family. Mom, Dad, Michael, Ren, friends of my parents since they were in college. Tentatively, Clarissa stood in the doorway, greeted warmly but never quite invited in. Especially with me, it was like a pane of glass kept her out, and in the days and weeks after Michael was gone, she stopped standing in the doorway.

When I was split into atoms, I had no family anymore.

 

Now Clarissa is my family, I’m pretty sure. On warm days like this we walk down the bike path that connects our apartment to the nearest shopping center, maybe stopping at a nearby park. I can’t really feel the warmth anymore, but she can. For me, it’s just the feeling of steps, of moving forward and then back again that soothes me. After all, we’ve had so much practice.

We look like old lesbians and on the days we stop by the park, I wonder if that’s what we’ll become someday. No family, no future for us really. Just time.

 

There are people like us, I think. Not just Nona and Ren and Jonas, but other people who have had their time and lives and families snatched away from them. I think of kiss-ins and die-ins, of bone dust on the president’s lawn and of the hundreds of times my body has become dust and ash. It doesn’t make me feel any more connected to the world, knowing that.

Sometimes Clarissa has to hold me, the feeling gone from my legs as I remember how empty the world is, even as I can barely stand the checkout line for groceries.

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to Steph


End file.
